Friday, July 20, 2012

Give me a 10!

First off, I’m all in favor of treating people nicely. You know, the whole golden rule concept. There are certain establishments that are considered “service” businesses.

The first one that comes to my mind is restaurants.
My wife and I classify restaurants in two different ways: fast food and sit down. The difference? With sit down, you are expected to give a tip at the end of your meal based on your service.

I’ll admit that I tend to tip on the generous side because I understand how hard the employees are working.

Once in a while, the service will be really good—to the point where I’ll seek out a manager to compliment the employee.
On the other hand, if the service is poor, I’ll just give them a lower tip and leave it at that.

I heard of a story where I guy was so upset at the service that on the receipt under “tip” he wrote, “-$2.00! The service was terrible!”

However, I’m seeing a trend where the focus on customer service is getting out of hand. I understand businesses are doing whatever they can to find an edge. One of the ways is to provide excellent customer service to employees. Yet, I disagree how they are going about it.

Recently, I took my car into the dealership to have the oil changed. I had a coupon. I was treated very well, and they did a wonderful job. Not only did they give it an oil change, but they also washed it and vacuumed the inside.

When it came time to pay, the service rep was very nice and explained what he did. That took about one minute. For the next two minutes, he explained how I’d be getting a call about my service experience. He showed me their banner they had “won” for the best service in the region. He explained how if I scored them lower than a “10” on any rating, they would fail.

Over the next couple of days, I received a call from the dealership reminding me to give them all 10s on the survey. I got an email reminding me. When we got the call, we gave them all 10s—which I would have done anyway because they did a great job.

So what is my point? Here’s a crazy idea. Stop the completely unfair rating systems. Instead of spending time and money telling me and reminding me how great the service was, spend it on, oh I don’t know … service?